My first site, please review (a very newbie site)

[My-Poker-Review.com]

hi everyone.

This is my first website: www.my-poker-review.com

I know my site is badly designed because i have no previous website experience, but I am trying to use this site to improve my skill and knowledge. The site is not finished yet but some comments are appreciated. Also, i have a lot of questions and hope someone can give me some advices.

1. I want to buy a logo with some poker graphic, any good site?

2. my major keyword is poker mathematics ( i know it's not good with the domain), i only submit to 3 free directory, people are declining my link exchange because my pagerank is zero, how can I level up my pagerank to at least one without paying?

3. I only submit my site into msn and yahoo because i don't want to submit my unfinished site to google yet (or it doesn't matter?). But something happens today, when I type my keyword (poker mathematics) in msn search, my site is ranking one and even yahoo i am ranking 25, this keyword i checked overtune has around 8000 searches in last month. Is it weird? because i never done any SEO yet(i am still reading some SEO beginner e-book). I want to know if msn is useless even I rank one? i only have under 50 people visiting my site from msn even I ranked one.

4. my site has already launched 3 weeks and i only have 4 people signed up from pokerstars and none from other of my poker rooms. Should I promote some smaller poker room to increase my conversion rate?

5. any suggestion to improve my site a newbie like me can do?

thank you everyone who give me advices

[edmc]

1) Heres a free option to add a simple logo while you decide what you want.

http://cooltext.com/

2) Usually not advisable to publically advertize your keywords, it will only increase your comp. Since you mentioned "poker mathematics", I didnt find it that great for hits. Increase your backlinks and you should get your PR.

3) Ive not got a clue how they rank msn & yahoo but google is the one you should be aiming for to get the hits. Submit to a list of free directories. I was No1 for a fairly competitive keyword for msn & the hits were fairly weak.

4) If you are just starting off, I suggest just sticking to promoting pokerstars untill your site grows a little. I think you should stick to bigger sites because they are already marketed and people feel more comfortable signing up to the familiar

5) Your pokerstars banner looks a little awkward on the page. Try fitting it into the page content or add it as a featured site for the month with a review page. 4 sign-ups in you 1st 3 weeks doesnt seem too bad,

[haynesey]

ok, heres my suggestions.

1. Make the menu down the left, text links rather then images, they load slowly.
2. Get rid of the donation banner looks VERY unproffesional.
3. If you need a banner making i know someone who makes good banners for $3 PM me for his msn address.

[hoursurfing]

Spend a couple days working on some really good "odds" pages and submit your pages to related Wikipedia articles. They have a few odds sections. That should raise your PR.

I'd also suggest getting rid of that Pokerstars banner. Instead, just have a few strategically placed text links throughout some of your text so they dont even look like ads.

Work to make your site useful and plenty of people here will exchange links with you. Once people see you around for a few months and your site changing they will begin to help you out.

[Dave]

What do you expect to achieve with your website?

Is this just a hobby site where you would be happy to make a few extra bucks each month?

Or are you aiming to make serious money and get into poker/internet marketing as a full time gig eventually?

[kdollar]

The problem with wikipedia is now they have nofollow links so having a link on wikipedia doesn't help your page rank...they recently changed this a month or two ago.

[hoursurfing]

Eh, that's a bummer

[Jeremy]

What do you expect to achieve with your website?

Is this just a hobby site where you would be happy to make a few extra bucks each month?

Or are you aiming to make serious money and get into poker/internet marketing as a full time gig eventually?

I think Dave is being polite. But in reality if you want to make the big dollars or drive a ton of traffic like the big guys are doing. Or even the medium sized affiliates for that matter, you will need to emulate what they are doing.

But if you are simply just making this site as you mentioned to improve your skills and knowledge then I would say it is a good starting point for learning the fundamentals of the poker affiliate market as well as raw html.

[My-Poker-Review.com]

especially thx for edmc, the free logo website really helps

I've change my index page today, is it better? if it is better, i will change all the pages. www.my-poker-review.com

few more questions

1. I am planning to only promote one poker room now, from your experience, which big poker room is best to start? (fast and consistent payment are considered.)

2. I will write a lot of content about poker mathematics because i used to be a math teacher and i am interested in this topic. Do you think this niche (only 8000 searches monthly in overtune) make some money?

3. for your experience, can submit some article help to increase the traffic?

4. last question, do you think my article in my index page good enough to make people click the banner? (sry i know this question may sound very noobi, but i really want to improve my site in every aspect)

[losercore]

Here is my problem.

The site is called my poker reviews but there are no poker reviews.

Poker math is a great niche to get into but i would prefer a different domain name.

People here are very helpful. Listen to jeremy about what you plan to do. This is the key to this industry.

What do you want from the site? Are planning on just having a hobby or making a couple thousand dollars a month? This is what will drive you.

Now what is the site about? Ask yourself if the site is an all-encompassing poker website or a niche site like poker math.

Once you start in this industry you become a business. You need to start looking at things as a business. If I went to any business and asked them what their 5 year outlook was they would either be able to give me answer right away or not have one at all. The business that does not have one will not be here in five years and that's why they don't have one.

A business makes plans, they invest, they take assumed risks and they grow and mature over time.

Sorry just ranting away for a bit...

Best of luck